Woman Combing Her Hair

Edgar Degas

Pastel on light green wove paper, now discolored to warm gray, affixed to original pulpboard mount

Metropolitan Museum of Art

This pastel work by Edgar Degas depicts a nude woman engaged in the intimate, private act of combing her hair—a subject to which Degas returned repeatedly throughout his career, from the mid-1870s through the 1890s. The figure is rendered with Degas's characteristic attention to the unguarded, unselfconscious pose, capturing a momentary gesture rather than a formal composition. Degas applied pastel in successive layers, building up rich color and texture, and employed bold color contrasts in modeling the figure's flesh tones, reflecting his engagement with the work of contemporaries such as Seurat and Van Gogh. A towering figure of French Impressionism, Degas (1834–1917) devoted much of his mature career to depicting women in modern, everyday settings, and his series of nude bathers and groomers—exhibited at the landmark 1886 Impressionist exhibition—stand among the most celebrated achievements of the movement.